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boobs

I received a disturbing email the other day at my civilian address (I do have a life outside the Slack). It was from a 14 year-old girl who was quite, erm, advanced for her age.

You see, she's wearing a 34D bra.

At 14.

The boys stare and tease; the girls make comments and try to steal her bra; sports are difficult and embarrassing.

How, she asked, do I deal with this?

I could only reflect back on my own experience, having been blessed with ample chestitude at a frighteningly young age.

It was the fall of 1980, and I was eight years old. The aroma of burning leaves hung in the air as I walked home from Main Street School. I remember wearing a white t-shirt and a black skirt, with a black and red knit sweater tied around my waist as it was unseasonably warm. From a block away I spied my mother standing outside on the front stoop of our house with a neighbor.

Mom called out to me, and I waved back. She told me to hurry up and run. So I ran that last block as fast as my black patent leather mary janes would take me.

I arrived at the front door panting. My mother turned to my neighbor.

"You see?" asked my mom.

"You're right," replied my neighbor. "Get that kid a bra."

We drove to Carson Pirie Scott and that afternoon I was the not-so-proud owner of my first underwire bra.

"Wear it everyday," my mother lectured.

And I have ever since.

Growing up, no one wants to be different. It's hard enough feeling different, but add in a physical manifestation of that difference during a time when hormones are starting to bubble and it gets even more difficult.

Boys made comments. Girls made comments. I had a larger chest than most of my junior high school teachers. I stopped playing baseball. Swinging a bat was impossible, not that I got a chance to do it all that often. I was the player most often hit by pitches in the all-male league - because pitchers couldn't keep their eye on the strike zone.

I had three basic choices in how to deal with everyone's reaction to my chest:

1. Death
2. Shyness
3. Comedy

I tried them all. Death wasn't really an option, although I prayed for it more than once. Shyness came and went. Comedy is what I resorted to, along with a touch of false bravado. Developing a sharp wit and a thick skin is really the only defense I had. If someone made a comment, I'd just look them in the eye and say "wow, how original."

Hey, it was the 80s. It worked.

There's actually a fourth choice, violence, which I don't advocate except times when it's truly necessary. There were a few guys that seemed to think as I developed outward that it was an invitation that read "touch me." Usually it only happened once, at which point I would get deadly silent and look the offender in the eye and simply say

Do that again and you'll lose that hand.

But there were a few where it didn't work. In junior high I had a locker next to a guy named Todd, who seemed like your perfect normal run-of-the-mill adolescent except that he had been held back three times. I actually did end up complaining to a teacher who witnessed it - and they did nothing. An elbow to the ribs and a knee to the groin is what it took. No more Community Boobs for Todd. It was the only time I hit someone who wasn't my brother.

I developed a bit of the fuck you mentality as well. People assumed I was a slut. Or I got asked out a lot. Or I would steal their boyfriend. I found it hard, being a boyfriend-stealing dating slut when I hadn't ever been on a date, or asked out, or ever had a boyfriend.

As I continued to grow outward, I also continued to develop inward. I read a lot and wrote even more. Fantasy was much preferable to a reality where construction men on the street whistled at your nine-year-old self as you walked down the Chicago streets holding your father's hand.

So I'm left here wondering, would I have become a writer if I hadn't developed so early? Would I have had the necessary internal experience?

What came first, the tits or the wits? I've had them both for what seems like forever.

I relayed all of this information to my young ample friend, ending my letter to her simply saying that high school does indeed suck. But it gets better. No, my boobs don't get me dates or help me steal boyfriends (not that I would anyway). Men still whistle and wave. I can never go without a bra.

But they're real.

And they're spectacular.